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Glass E 4- 5 ft 



Book 



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THE WAR 



AND 



ITS LESSONS, 



B\ 



JEZHA M, HUNT, 



AUTHOR OF *' WORDS ABOUT THE WAR, " AC. 



NEW YORK: 
PRINTED BY F. SOMERS, 

No. 13 SPROCE STREET. 
1862. 



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THE WAR 



ITS LESSONS. 



The American struggle for Nationality, which commenced with 
the downfall of Fort Sumter, marks an era in the history of civiliza- 
tion, as critical as any the world has ever witnessed. Those who 
are agitated by the actual contacts and immediate perils of civil war 
have scarce had opportunity to measure the immensity of interests 
* involved ; but those who ar% calmly examining the world's Present by 
the world's Past, and by all the principles and illustrations which 
facts, reason and experience may furnish, are solemnly and weightily 
impressed with the conviction that we are engaged in transactions 

j which, for weal or wo, are to tell immensely on all that relates to 
morals, liberty, government and law. The epoch is one for which 

m we need to arouse all the energies of the body, the intellect and the 
soul, that as true men of a trying age, we may be equal to the emer- 
gencies, which in the course of events, have fallen on our times. 

The part already enacted, has been upon no ordinary scale. At 
the very commencement of the conflict ominous clouds hovered over 
our political horizon. Wise men quaked because of fear, and strong 
men strung their nerves to a higher key, feeling that we were on 
the verge of a conflict which involved the interests of themselves, 
their country, their posterity, and all that related to the welfare of 
civil and religious liberty all over the broad earth. Traitors, with 
stealthy hand, had been loosing the cords and unbraiding the strands 
of our strength until it almost seemed as if the grand cable of Ame- 
rican power had dwindled to a thread. But slender as it appeared, 
the central, close-woven braid of republican Nationality was not yet 
sundered. A kind hand had still protected it from utter destruction; 
it would not break of itself, and waking to a sense of the imminent 
danger, a half million of freemen rushed to the rescue, ready t<> 



4 THE WAR AND ITS LESSON'S. 

bind and strengthen it with their own heart-strings. We all their 
felt that every other human question was secondary to that of self- 
pn serration. It was useless to discuss what should be oar future 
si iun as a nation until we were made sure of out ability still to ex- 
ist. The rebellion was so gigantic in its proportions,, the bad logic 
by which it was sustained so deceptive, and its aids and abettors,. 

5 rath and North, so much too numerous, that common prudence re- 
quired* that all other issues should be for the time dismissed, until 
contests on the battle field should determine whether what we knew 
to be our rights could be maintained. We believe the result, in this 
respect,, no longer doubtful. Not that the war is already or even 
■early ended ; not that all obstacles are yet overcome, else there would; 
be less need for discussion j but we have at least demonstrated that 
our National Government intends to crush the rebellion, and that the 
people are determined to support and sustain it in the endeavor. By 
land aiui by sea we have demonstrated to ourselves,, as well as -others,, 
a military capacity of which, as a nation,, we were entirely unaware. 
We hare witnessed the great spectacle o£ a people,, inured only to 
the arts of peaceful industry, eagerly marching forth,, as an immense 
palice^force, for the restoration of law and order, and herein we have- 
seen enough to satisfy us,. that r with right on our side r we are able to 
make our defence amid the dread artillery of war. 

But Are have already fully arrived at a point at which Intellect 
and Heart can not but be concerned as to other questions besides 
those having single reference to armed defence upon the battle-field. 
If the war is to have results at all proportioned to its gigantic char- 
acter and to the magnitude of the questions really involved,, the in- 
tellectual and moral contest which can not btrt take place,, and which 
will assume its proportions of paramount importance,, as- the other 
subsides, must be one which will thoroughly exercise the mental and 
moral forces of the American people-. In the councils of the nation 
and of the states, at the forum r the convention, the assembly-room,. 
the bar, the social circle-, the ballot-boxy the press,, and at the heart of 
y patriot, there are questions to be started, examined and acted' 
opi .n r ( >n the decision of which oscillate, as much as upon the war, the 
destinies of our land. Conceal it or not as we may, the principles 
of human government are again up for trial at the bar of popular 
nial. Points in national law, once considered as settled,, are now 
undeniably open questions. The whole subject of Civil Liberty is un- 
folded for a new investigation. Monarchy, Aristocracy, RepuUi ; 



TEE WAR AJTD ITS LESSON'S, 5 

amism, Democracy, are again at the public hall of judgment for com- 
parison and contrast. More pointedly still, the American Government 
itself, in its grand theories and its actual workings, is submitted to 
irs for radical inspection and observation. Glory as we may and 
ought in much that is illustrious in the past, the large fact is before 
us, palpable as signs of blood and general disorder can make it, that 
either in the machinery itself, or the great people who manage it, 
there is something wrong. Events are occurring which were not 
specified in the bond. Our forefather statesmen were definite men. 
Our form of government was not an accident or impulse, but a set- 
tled conviction, arrived at by philosophic thought, accurate study, and 
large experience ; and least of all did they expect that, by its own 
friction, it would destroy itself. They flattered themselves that they 
had so organized, modified and adjusted a system as to make it al- 
most innate with the principle and power of perpetuity. They ex- 
pected of their sons such adherence to, or such modifications of it, as 
would secure the blessings of a firm, peaceful, indissoluble Union. 
They never anticipated that the 4th of July, 1862, would dawn upon 
a million of their posterity arrayed one against the other, in defence 
of what each regarded as their rights under the Constitution. 

This whole rebellion involves, therefore, questions and principles 
too important to be regarded with a superficial view. It has to do 
with the roots of things. It strikes at foundations. It is not an ac- 
cidental circumstance or a mere roug'hness on the outside of one of 
the small wheels of government. It is something wrong, permeating 
and penetrating- us in every part. The war itself, its antecedent and 
present history, the conflicting opinions of which it is the terrible 
outbreak, the savage animosities which jut out in numberless instan- 
ces, the loose state of public opinion in many localities, and the moral 
condition of the masses North and South, tell us so plainly, that even 
dull ears may hear it, that the greatest piece of govermental handi- 
work ever devised, is critically out of order. It is working, at present, 
wretchedly, either because of some practical defects in itself, or from 
some deficiency in the nation which operates it. Perhaps defects 
may be found in both. Enormous and terrible facts, reaching to 
our hearth-stones and to our hearts, summon us to an investiga- 
tion of causes in order that we may, with more precision, apply the 
remedies. Now and then we stumble upon accidental cures for dis- 
ease ; but this is not the law in govermental maladies. These causes 
are not accidents. The relations of cause and effect are as defi- 



6 THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 

nite in their action upon nations as upon individuals. A government 
is but a grand generalization and combination of causes, to obtain 
certain and adequate results, and it has settled and confirmed mov- 
ing forces just as much as have matter and mind. The same laws 
of nature by which a cherry falls, guide the stars in their courses ; 
and so government is but the application, on a large scale, of prin- 
ciples which lie at the foundation of the minutest relations of society. 
If mistakes are made, the jar and the crash are not accidental, but 
astounding, because enacted on a scale of greater magnitude. We 
have, for nearly half a century or more, had in the governmental prob- 
lem we have been working at, negative and positively bad quantities, 
which are now yielding their legitimate results ; and until reduced or 
eliminated they will not fail to bear their fruit. Crises in govern- 
ments are not generally accidents. Those in free governments which 
do not arise from foreign aggression, but from internal dissension, 
are never so. The present state of our republic, as to war, as to pol- 
itics, as to national sins, as to the character of the rulers and the 
ruled, is just as much as can possibly be conceived, the legitimate 
production of principle and influences which have been long at work 
all over our land. 

Our crisis is not a financial one. The fault is not in our broad 
acres, which have never failed to yield, in rich luxuriance, their abun- 
dant harvests'; not in our commerce, which has been wafted, far and 
near, over every ocean, with remunerative success ; not in our manu- 
factures, which have been as well sustained as need be, in a country 
so prominently agricultural, nor in any other of the departments to 
which Political Economy relates. 

Our trouble is not international, unavoidably precipitated upon 
us by the aggressive policy of foreign powers, not even a civil com- 
motion incited by foreign influence, but accurately, purely, perfectly 
a home-production, an indigenous outgrowth from the government 
and the people. It is not even entirely sectional. Our government 
is national, most of our sins have been national too, and the nation 
at large has participated even in the profits, as well as other 
results, of local institutions. The evils of sections, so long as they 
pecuniarily paid, have been fostered by enough of the people of other 
localities, to give them life and efficiency, and the nation at large, is 
more particeps criminis; than we are sometimes disposed to concede. 

With an elimination of the disturbing, economical, or international 
causes above-mentioned, only three things are necessary to form a 



TtfE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 7 

permanent, successful republican government ; and these are, a wise 
-system of government, a wise and good people to govern, and repre- 
sentatives worthy of both government and people. In all these re- 
spects, the time has come to re-examine the foundations and the super- 
structure of the American Republic. Perchance, the war itself can- 
not end until, in some of these, the sources of our evil are found and 
remedied; or if it can, true restoration and permanent repair can not 
be secured until the process for recovery is instituted. 

It is a mistaken view, that times like these are not the occasions 
for such examination and reconstruction. It is an organic and prac- 
tical law in the history of nations, that principles and reforms are 
mostly suggested and generally settled into definite results, in the 
era of revolutions. National power, displayed in civil war upon the 
battle-field, is more than useless if it does not develop itself into ac- 
tual enactments in the statute book of the nation, and in the 
hearts of the people. Revolutions always mean change. Rebellions 
seldom eventuate by merely bringing lawless ones into submission. 
Such a one as ours can not, in the very nature of things, admit of 
such a limitation. In a revolution, or a large, organized rebellion, 
you never can merely describe a circle, and, like one who has sailed 
round the world, stop at the starting point. Organized, active, ear- 
nest rebellions have meanings, which either kill a nation, or make it 
think up to the point of doing and daring, by process of government 
and law, what future as well as present welfare may seem to demand. 
The cords are unloosed that the stakes may be strengthened. Some 
of the noblest advances of Grecian and Roman civilization, were 
prompt govermental acts, incident to great national crises. It was 
the taking just and due advantage of the power which great out- 
breaks often impart to the wiser and better classes of people, that 
inscribed the glowing capitals of Magna Charta, upon the statute 
book of British jurisprudence, and its principles in the port-folio of 
freedom. 

Habeas Corpus attended the Restoration, because the will of the 
people, in the midst of perilous times, both claimed and demonstrat- 
ed it as a necessity. The noble Bill of Rights, and the protestant 
status of the English nation, gave to the Revolution of 16S8, its 
'< Glorious" adjective, because those concerned were not satisfied with 
mere triumph in form, but insisted that causes which had before ex- 
isted, should for ever cease, and that deliverance therefrom should, 
by positive enactment, be secured. 



g THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS, 

Our own Revolutionary struggle, is a forcible illustration of the 
development of new ideas during a struggle, and their registra- 
tion upon the civil polity of a nation. It would have been no very 
great affair, had it only exhibited manly courage, and accomplished, 
what it was at first designed to do, the repeal of a few tax laws, 
and stamp acts, accompanied by an apology for the wrong. The oc- 
casion having required intense and immense action, our fathers rose 
above the mere level of seeking retribution for a specific imposition, 
to the grand principle of a human right, and improving the opportu- 
nity to sweep away the cause of their disaster, made the epoch from 
'76 to '89, glorious, as the meant development of a new growth in 
history. The records of the ages, every where show us, that the great 
foundation and repair stones of nations, have been quarried out by 
the explosions of political elements, and from rough beds, and amid 
stony griefs, by faithful hands been rolled up into the bulworks of 
the nation. 

We might go still further and affirm, that it is chiefly at such times 
that we may reasonably hope a nation to expurgate itself, either as 
to its people, or its government, and the modes of operating it. A mere 
quiet, peaceable reform in a man, independent of any exigencies, 
proving lasting and decisive, is a very rare thing; and it is eminently 
more rare with nations. Nearly all the successful reform bills, amid 
peace, are those relating to the finances and political economy of a 
nation. Great moral reforms never, in a republican government, qui- 
etly grow up from the masses of the people. The bad tendencies of 
human nature, in govermental organizations, become so multiplied 
that, in times of peace, such errors are not fully appreciated. Inde- 
pendent of this outbreak, and of the particular vice which fostered it, 
there have been among our more correct citizens and statesmen, many 
who have looked with fear, upon the ominous moral signs of our times, 
and not a few now regard this rebellion as affording us the only pos- 
sibility of reforming what is defective either in structure or opera- 
tion. 

Providence seems to permit crises and revolutions in the history of 
nations sometimes, because there is no other way by which justice 
and right can regain a working majority. Noah might have argued 
in vain for ages, amid the corruptions of eastern civilization, in be- 
half of principle, and all to no avail, save to excite the mockings of 
the multitude, but before the Deluge was half over, he had the ma- 
jority ; and when the Most High shaketh terribly the nations, it is 



THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS, 9 

<often that golden opportunities may be afforded to carry pure marble 
■blocks into the national structure, with which to replace the sand- 
stone, and to adopt moral and legislative reforms, which, if attempted 
at other times, would bo overwhelmed with unreasonable yet popular 
clamor. It is hopeful and suggestful of prompt action, to see through 
history how, in times of real felt national peril, the more corrupt, like 
the wicked in a sea-storm, will listen to, and permit action by the well- 
disposed, even though not favorable to their course. The bad ele- 
ment is often thus brought into abeyance, quailing before the neces- 
sities of the times, felt to be those for good heads and good hearts, 
it is a submission to the majesty of truth, forced out by affliction, 
and it is not safe for those who may then use the advantage to post- 
pone action until the peril is less impressive, or the disaster irrepar- 
able. The patriot, the philanthropist, the statesman, the Christian, 
are to regard these as providential epochs for planting the royal oaks 
of national principle. They can not be started on fallow ground, 
but when the nation is sub-soiled, there is seed-time for such germs. 
It is now too, that those formerly planted may be examined in root 
and branch, and each worm of destruction destroyed. 

In times like these, every true patriot, and every man discerning 
and desiring what is right, has double duty to perform. We are liv- 
ing in a period when it is possible to do much for or against one's 
country, and the only safety is to be doing according to settled prin- 
ciples of right. Never have we more reason to rejoice in the eter- 
nity of truth, than when such afflictions surround us. "Truth crushed 
to earth, does rise again," and although in the rising, the country is 
shaken to its "centre, we need not despair. There is more hope that 
in the majesty of their power, correct principles will assume their 
rightful position, amid such emergencies, than when we are floatii.g 
down the current of political corruption, * as idly as a painted ship 
upon a painted ocean," It is a great thing for a nation now and 
then to find out how much real prospective and sometimes present 
power there is in daring nationally to do just right, and if ever a 
people on the broad earth needed to learn this, it is the American. 
Not that, as a nation, we are the most corrupt in the registry of tlic 
present century, for the same amount of corruption among the ma!->> -; 
which would permit a monarchy to last three centuries, would dost i - y 
a republic in one; but never in the history of 6000 years, did ever 
Hon knowing the right, try so hard to 'do half right as haft this of ott,*, 
and, like stopping half way down a precipice, this is always perilous 
work. 



10 THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 

Under the pressure of this effort many a good old English word 
has almost upset its meaning. Radical once devoted a wise reference 
to the foundation and root principles of things. It is now the deri- 
sive epithet of a reformer. Conservative, once denoted that moderation 
between extremes which used judgment, but yet never quailed in the 
vindication of right. It now, in fact, generally describes those who 
are trying to do what will be most popular. More than all, E.jype- 
diency has become the most expressive epithet of American legisla- 
tion, and to such an extent, as to bring it in as a policy exceptional of 
right. There is such a thing as the doctrine of expediency, but it is 
only in the sense that it leads us to make choice amid the different 
methods of accomplishing a right. It never endeavors to palliate a 
wrong, or to rid itself of the responsibility of dealing with it in some 
form or other just so soon as it has the ability. Expediency is never 
authorized to step forth as an equal antagonist of what, on every 
other ground, secerns right. It is at best, and at all times, only one 
of the minor elements, since generally what is right is expedient. 
Justice and prudence are sister graces, and were never meant to be 
the conflicting duelists of our political code of honor. "Whenever we 
are sure, as we now are, about the tendencies of more than one of our 
national sins, and about their inherent wrong, very palpable should 
be the indications to prevent us from acting right out, the right, in 
such a crisis as this. The great Author of justice, at present seems, 
by the withdrawal from our councils of those who were certain to 
impede progress in the right direction, and by the felt necessities of 
our day, to give once more to principle, the power of a working ma- 
jority. With the ability of action thus granted, the question of ex- 
pediency vanishes ; and if the American republic has not the ability 
now, with ten such states as the seeeders back again within the na- 
tion, I know not where is the prospect of perpetuity. Better run the 
risk of a few exigencies in the line of duty, than let duty slip and se- 
cure the greater quietude, which is but the surer token of eventual 
dissolution. By a different course the crisis may, perhaps, bo more 
easily past, but only to meet a more terrific one in the future. In- 
fluences, North and South, have been at work for the last many years, 
which betokens evil to our republic, as surely as symptoms ever be- 
token disease, and unless we now improve the (ioil-^iven opportu- 
nity to re-right the leaning tower of out greatness, the penalty will 
be, impossibility in the future and destruction at last. 

Even those who personally admit the policy of doing right, and 



THE WAR AND ITS LESSON'S. 11 

who feel that as to individuals it is always expedient, sometimes 
seem to loose sight of the fact when applied to that aggregation of 
individuals — a republic. In times like these we need to study Luther, 
Howarc 1 , Wilberforce, the Dutch Republic, and England, in its crises, 
and if there is one philosophy in history preeminent above all, it is that 
which teaches, not only the nobility, but the national ability and ex- 
pediency of right. Justice is a host, but the American popular idea 
of expediency, a "pigmy perched on Alps, a pigmy still." 

But even with those who give a general assent to the national ad- 
viseability of thorough principle, there is another mode of shifting 
personal responsibility. Allusion is often made to the so-called "nat- 
ural results" of the war, and individual effort excused on the ground 
that the war will, of itself, accomplish desired changes. To a very 
limited extent only, is this true. Its most natural results are those 
bad ones which ai'e ever incident to large bodies of men separated 
from home associations, and family connexions, and cast together 
amid the attendant evils of the camp and the battle-field. But, speak- 
ing politically and govermentally, war has but few natural results 
independent of the resolve and intent of the people and the govern- 
ment which sustain it. It is but an aggregation of individual power, 
applied in a specific direction. If the feelings and principles involved 
in it are not asserted and defended with unflinching, untiring energy 
in the legislative halls, and in the heart of the nation, as well as by 
the bayonet, it is all of little avail. It is not the battle but its ani- 
mus, the mind it tokens, the principle it outspeaks, the idea it repre- 
sents that marks the real victory. Hence every triumph of a nation 
over internal foes, is but a physical triumph unless sustained by the 
intellectual and moral forces of those it represents. Contrary to so 
plain a proposition, there are multitudes in our land who are hoping 
certain results from the war, and yet condemn free discussion and de- 
cisive govermental action on the ground that natural causes will 
accomplish desired ends. It is only necessary for the masses to 
come to just sUch a conclusion and our greatest victories are but 
gigantic sacrifices of human flesh. As did Tamerlane of old, on Eas- 
tern plains, so we may strew the western continent with a million 
skeletons, and from their skulls erect a pyramid of savage joy, and 
all to no avail. War is not an ocean on which a nation is to launch 
like a piece of drift wood, to float away just as tide would take it. 
It is indeed a new element in our history, and worse than all, one in 
which we shall sink unless the masses give right direction to it. 



12 THE WAR AND ITS LESSON'S. 

Handiwork, manual and military force are among the* first things,, 
but head-work and heart-work too, must do their parts. It is a 
time for great thinking and great praying, as well as for great acting. 
The true patriot should be looking' with two eyes intent as those of 
his own emblematic eagle, for opportunity to elucidate principles and 
enforce laws, which are taught or illustrated by this straggle. In 
matters of right there is danger of delay as well as from* hot haste, 
and there are many disturbing' elements, now felt by the nation to be 
such, which are not safe to be left with the hope that, somehow or 
other, antidotes thereto will struggle along into successful embodi- 
ment into our national polity. These will not incorporate themselves, 
of their own accord. If they deserve a place they must be planted 
there by the decisive and direct action of the people and their repre- 
sentatives. Let it be impressed upon the intellect and heart of every 
American citizen, that it is only the principle of himself and others, 
expressed in every legitimate method, which is to give shape, char- 
acter, and result to the rebellion. Though Providence superintends, 
it is by means, and the better classes are not at liberty to expect 
good "natural results/ 7 if making* no effort to give correct tone and 
direction to public opinion. 

It then becomes to us a very pertinent and fundamental inquiry, 
What is to be done in order to restore true prosperity to our nation,, 
and to enable us to transmit the blessing of a good republican go- 
vernment to our children, in perpetuity ? 

First of all the people, and especially those who, by position and 
the disorder of the times, have more than usual power for good, must 
rise to the heart-felt recognition of the fact, that there can be no other 
I <$is for a republican government except in the combination of moral 
/. inciple, toith intelligence, and the general diffusion of the two among 
the masses of the nation. You can never expect to make a good go- 
vernment out of bad material.. You may cast great masses of filth 
into the sea, and certain laws of chemistry and motion will neutra- 
lise it. There is no such power in national affairs. As the different 
members are brought together and adjusted until a government is 
formed, there will be no improvement in the aggregated mass over 
the condition of its component parts. The law of republics is rather 
that if one member suffer the whole suffers with it. By skilful com- 
bination or fortuitous circumstances a collapse may sometimes be 
I st] Mined, but if there' is not moral and intellectual strength at the 
b mi, the edifice must fall. Statesmanship, sagacity, prudence, or 



THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 13 

t!ie witheld avenging hand, may, for a time, suspend impending- ca- 
lamities, but they are sure at length to come. The tree will fruit 
thought it be an Upas. You can not anticipate or predicate success 
to a government, any more than you can to an individual, upon any 
other basis than principle and ability. Tact, intrigue, diplomacy,, 
statesmanship, political shrewdness, are not enough. In that great 
concentration of single individuals, single principles, philosophic 
facts which we call government, we get rid of not one of the organic- 
laws on which human society rests. In a monarchy, individual ele- 
ments have not a force proportioned to numbers, because the king is 
supreme, and the power of the people is kept dormant. In a limited 
monarchy or aristocracy, if the g-overnors and the peers are good and 
able men, here ag'ain, since the masses have only limited power, cor- 
ruption will be felt only to a limited extent, but in a Democratic re- 
public, where the people at large are ths basis of representation, and the 
representatives the basis of government, there must be good leaven 
for the whole lump. Corruption or ignorance among the masses is 
too sure to count one by one, its numbers, in the actual condition of 
the nation. The only relief is, that if in minority it is under con- 
trol ; if reaching forward boldly toward a majority, it is a fearful 
thing. The goodness and the greatness of our ancestors, embodied 
in the example and Constitution they have left us, may check and re- 
tard the process of decay, but like the good constitution of a man, 
inherited from sound parents, it will not withstand subsequent seeds 
of disease and death. 

Mere love of liberty never founded a republic which it sustained. 
Liberty is not a god or a goddess, and the love of it without the power 
of morals or of mind, is in government as in every thing else, Licen- 
tiousness. Morality and education, and a wise system of restraints, 
were recognized by our fathers as the basis of republicanism. Their 
sought liberty was religious as well as civil, intelligent as well as 
earnest, law-abiding as well as free. If less of what we term liberal 
education, there was more of moral principle, and any corruption 
among masses was more in abeyance to a higher public tone of char- 
acter. 

There is little need of labored argument to show that the moral 
standing of our nation has deteriorated. It is the theme of the pa- 
triot, the statesman, the philanthropist, as well as of the moralist and 
the Christian. The people know it, the government feels it, the press 
»peaks it, the halls of legislation show it, and the rebellion seals the 



14 THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 

proof. The active causes of this state of affairs, have been potent 
from the very methods of operating our political system. The State, 
in its anxiety to keep apart from the Church, has taken a still further 
step and divorced education from religion. Education itself has, in 
many sections, been grossly neglected, and hence we have had to 
contend with two of the most perilous enemies of true liberty — Ig- 
norance on the one hand, and unprincipled education on the other. 
Libertinism and anarchy can ask no better associates ; the masses, 
uninformed enough to be led, and the leaders educated enough to be 
wise for mischief. Hence the most troublesome traitors to the na- 
tion have been, mentally speaking, educated men. We have failed 
to recognize this as a Christian nation. We have failed to act 
as if not only education, but the modes of education, were national 
interests, more than tariffs, or banks, or slave laws, or internal 
improvements. Territories have been received as states, without any 
reference either to intelligence or morals, but on the sole bad basis 
of numbers. Statesmanship has been directed far more to questions of 
financial policy than to those of social reform. Annexation, commerce, 
manufactures and all the round of finance, have been called the vital 
issues. Review the records of executive, legislative and judicial 
acts, for the last fifty years, and the question least of all agitated, has 
been the mode of improving the moral and social condition of the 
people. The training of the nation is radically wrong. The whole 
influence of the government has not been felt for good, upon either 
the intellects or the hearts of the people. Our statesmen have long 
enough worked at incidentals. It is time to step back to funda- 
mentals, and have government and people feel that if the stone- 
work is not strengthened the building will fall. Though patched and 
plastered, fluted and porticoed, grandly frescoed, and munificently 
adorned by all the ingenuity of legislative artists, it cannot stand. 
It is needful to meet the emergencies of shattered colums and widen- 
ing crevices, but only as watching the opportunity and feeling the 
imperative necessity of dealing with causes rather than results. The 
unmistakeable tendency of OUT republic, for many years past, towards 
destruction, has been but precipitated by the crisis of which slavery 
was the instigating monarch. In irreligion and ignorance, in party 
spirit and party machinery, in luxury and effeminacy, in pecuniary 
subserviency, and political corruption, in libertinism and lawlessness, 
bad theories, and bad facts and acts, North and South, there was 
enough to excite the most serious forebodings, even apart from the 



TBE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 15 

sectional sins that have hurried us to the conflict. We now have an 
opportunity, while the ship is at sea, to throw overboard some of the 
troublesome freight to which we are too apt to cling in a calm, and 
thus lighten it of an unsafe cargo. 

It is in vain to expect moral principle in a government, unless the 
government itself is arranged and administered in reference thereto. 
It will not insinuate itself. It is not with governments a natural 
growth. It is only when the people and those chief in power, come 
to feel that without morality and education, all the commercial and 
ancestral advantages of a republic will not save it, that a stable, 
abiding, free government becomes a possibility. This is the deep 
and broad lesson of the War, and it is for us to act upon it. I know 
not that it will cease until we feel ourselves learning lastly and earn- 
estly in that direction. 

In looking at the Farewell Address of our beloved Washington, 
representing, as it does, the better sentiment of his times, it is de- 
lightful to see how fully this idea is represented and enforced. Already 
he began to feel that there were signs of a deficiency of moral strength, 
and hence you will notice how earnestly he dwells upon moral in- 
fluences, how pointedly he pleaded for the virtues of the people; how, 
for the time, he seemed to loose sight of all so-called legal or financial 
questions, and even of intellectual culture, in his anxiety as a pa- 
triot, for that of the heart. He knew, as we ought to know, that 
a stable, free government, without such a basis, must be an impos- 
sibility. Greece and Rome had demonstrated it, and reason and ex- 
perience confirmed it. Nations are very apt to be deceived in this 
repect. They aggregate together a form, a constitution, a body of 
laws, a civil polity in all its details, commit them to men of ill talent, 
and then accustom themselves to speak and to think as if the wel- 
fare of the nation turned upon this or that political measure or finan- 
cial scheme. Now these, though quite important, are but the outside 
limbs and members of the body politic. They are not the live sen- 
ses. The grand trunk and bark in the republican tree of Liberty, 
the circulating medium of the life power, are moral principle among 
the masses, and such intelligence as will give to it mental power, 
circulation and united action. It can not be concealed, that either 
the people have failed to sustain morality in the government, or the 
government failed to encourage and secure it among the people. They 
are correlative to, and associated with each other. Thejnasses may 
be so impressed in such an era as this, with the true essentials of 



16 THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 

success as to permit the better class to represent the nation, or in an 
emergency, the government itself may become the reformer of the 
people. The great question, therefore, to the solution of which the 
patriot should address .profound attention in these our times is, 
How shall the government and people be brought to a higher stand- 
ard of moral, and a more judicious mental culture ? Other questions 
and issues are important as relating to immediate exigencies, but 
he is a narrow-minded legislator who is not, after all, looking out 
with eager watchfulness, for the opportunity to plant deep such fun- 
damental ideas as shall establish a correct moral basis. Whether 
prominent national sins should not be declared and shown to be dis- 
tasteful to the government, and placed under process of abatement ? 
Whether the Bible should not be allowed and used in every public 
school of the land ? Whether a system of schools, united with reli- 
gious associations, should not be encouraged as well as the public 
school, now studiously freed from any moral influence ? Whether the 
right of franchise should not be limited to those who can read and 
write, since means are provided for the poor ; and most of all how 
to train the rising generation morally ? These, and such like items, 
as broad in political as in social bearings, should be thoroughly un- 
der consideration. While dealing with speciil questions of immediate 
crisis, we had better be laying the foundations of which alone per- 
petuity can be predicated. If not,"we are but patching up for emer- 
gencies, and leaving foundations and frame-work in process of decay. 
There are numbers of political cobblers, and timid moralists, who 
think we have enough on hand without meddling with any such mat- 
ters, but we always shall have enough on hand if we do not meddle 
with them. We have the men and the means ; we have the power 
of a felt necessity ; we have the most disturbing element, by its 
own action withdrawn from our national councils, and if earnest in 
right, we have God-bestowed power now as never before. If govern- 
ment and people will for once dare to do right, we will struggle out of 
the troublous quagmires in which policy and expediency have been 
wallowing us, and stand upon the firmer, higher, safer, easier plat- 
form of conscious right Though an angry and surging ocean is 
healing about us, like the good forefathers of 1G22 — let us dare to 
feel and declare, God and the Word of God, a good conscience, and 
faith in the strength of right as the rock, which alone can lift our 

heads above the breakers, and the powers which alone can make an 
abiding peace to the storm. We have no theory that the nation must 



? 



■«PHE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 17 

become a saint in order to save it, or that wickedness is likely to 
cease soon in this part of the earth ; but we do believe and know that 
a higher standard of right would conduce to a higher approxima- 
tion thereto-; that a more realizing sense of the necessary purity of 
•a republican government, in order to success, would lead to more sa- 
gacity in this direction, and more than all, that He who is King over 
all blessed for ever, will sustain that nation which endeavors to sust- 
tain itself. Even errors are kept alive and potent for a long period, 
by virtue of the mingled truth they contain, and our nation with all 
its lapsings, has still enough of the preserving .principle, if it is only 
•directed toward a higher moral stand-point. 

Having thus noticed the great general indication as to our refuge 
-for safety, we turn to the notice of specific sins, which are now dis- 
tressing us, and which seem to need immediate remedies. Slavery, in- 
temperance, and politics are to us, at present, the most formidable 
results of neglect of principles above noticed, and as they are threaten- 
ing in their actual present enormity, we should leave the discussion 
but half completed did we not consider the modes of dealing with 
these. What shall be done with Slavery? In answering this ques- 
tion it is not necessary to recount, at any length, the proofs of 
its sad enormity. English law and English opinion had thoroughly 
•canvassed the arguments pro and con in respect to it, long before it 
became so prominently a national question with us. Historical facts 
•have long since proven the horrors of the slave trade, close, logical 
•argument demonstrated the wickeness of the bondage, solid prose 
exposed its evils, and pathetic verse moved the heart against its en- 
durance. What it costs to get rid of it, and the possibility of so 
doing, the life and labors of Wilberforce and his noble compeers, 
are the best illucidation thereof. These at one stroke illustrate with 
what pertinacity human nature and national law will cling to a crime, 
when pecuniarily profitable, and how certainly, too, persistency in tie- 
fence of right will overcome at last. Though in the sentiment of the 
beautiful sonnet of Wordsworth to Clarkson ; 

" It was an obstinate hill to climb, toilsome and dire, 
Yet zeal did find repose at length in victory." 

'The system of American slavery, as a bold actual existence in the 
19th century of the world's new life, is -no improvement upon any 
ether form of bondage ; and our rejoicing is, that after the conflicting 
efforts of a half century, we have to-day a president who is the type 
<ef the idea, that slavery and freedom cannot co-exist as a permanency 



18 THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 

in the American Republic. We shall therefore take it for granted, that 
among 1 those best able to judge, slavery has come to be regarded as, in 
all its working and influences, evil and only evil, and that continually. 
Yet this does not lead us to sympathize with those merely moral re- 
formers, who are so immensely opposed to slavery as to see no other 
national sin, and to feel that with this removed, all is peace and qui- 
etness. There are bold infidels, miserable socialists, political hacks, 
dissolute men who talk morality as to slavery and are immoral them- 
selves in every thing else, and these, in their own department of sin, 
are doing as much to the detriment of civil freedom as their position 
and circumstances will allow. Slavery is not our only sin, even as 
to it the South is not solely responsible, and it is well to keep this in 
view, in dealing with the crime. It is no reason for palliating the 
punishment, but is a reason why we should not foster personal or 
sectional animosities. We speak of it then as one of our national 
sins, the one chief in enormity and most prominent in bad results, and 
as such first inquire what shall be done as to it ? 

We believe the emancipation policy of the President, in its general 
outline, suggests the proper method to be pursued in respect to it. 
It is evidently based upon three prominent ideas connected with our 
present condition, and with the admitted relations of our Govern- 
ment : First, The incompatibility of slavery with republican institu- 
tions. Second, The right, or, at least, the advisability of states deal- 
ing with their own local institutions. It cannot be denied that when 
a local institution of a state seriously interferes with the" welfare of 
the Union, that the General Government may be under necessity of in- 
terference therewith, but where the same object can be accomplished 
by state action it is far better. Third, The emancipation policy re- 
cognizes the fact that an immediate, universal emancipation act would 
be injurious to the race concerned, and be a source of evil to them, 
only second to that of bondage itself. It in no way apologizes for 
slavery itself, or palliates its evil ; it does not bring in the doctrine 
of expediency, in determining whether slavery itself is wrong ; but 
as determining the right way to do a right thing. The gradual eman- 
cipationist has no more apologies for or compromises with the sys- 
1 1 n i than the most hurried abolitionist. Both agree as to what must 
in some way or other be accomplished. They only differ as to 
methods. They illustrate two classes of good men, just such as wc 
find in almost every prominent, moral, social or reformatory question; 
the impracticable good man, who has a conscience as to the essential 



THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 19 

right of a thing-, but none as to the mode of accomplishing it, and, 
therefore, seldom or never succeeds ; and the practical good man, who, 
like the other, and as clearly too, sees the right, but also sees the 
right method of accomplishing it. An act to-day from our President 
and Congress, declaring universal emancipation, without compensa- 
tion or provision for the emancipated race, would have as much effect 
in the South as if we were to attempt to regulate labor in China, 
and at the North could not but excite dissension and distrust. 

But should not our government go still further than it has as to the 
system of gradual emancipation and compensation which it may deem 
wise to initiate, and not allow ANY SECEDED STATE again to take 
its former position, except upon the condition that such jpo/ icy be ac- 
cepted ? There is a decided improbability that all the states will 
at present or in prospect, accept the plan proposed, if we cling to the 
doctrine, that according to the Constitution we have no right to inter- 
fere with slavery in the seceded states. Even yet, the scheme of 
emancipation has met with very moderate favor in border states, and 
been opposed by most of their representatives. Slavery has been 
largely remunerative to the owners, and its influence is so debasing 
and prejudicing that we may not expect those concerned to be moved 
by the same arguments which convince others. As well might you 
hope to find the friends of temperance resident in hotels and grog 
shops, as to find the friends of freedom among slave proprietors. 
We have already had abundant proof how little even the more liberal- 
minded of the South are to be relied upon in considering, discussing 
or voting upon this question. The better class of their so-called Un- 
ionists, although unconscious of their prejudices, see as through this 
glass darkly, and with the exception of a few such as Clay, R. J. 
Breckinridge, Brownlow and others, who have reached the higher 
plane, and gaze with unclouded view, the local institution still holds 
the owner's mind in vassalage. It is rarely that any vice is limited 
or expelled by the action of those who derive from it pecuniary sup- 
port, save where law, persuasion and locality invite to its extermi- 
nation. Such influences do not reach most of the slave states, and if 
those now in rebellion are welcomed back to all former privileges, 
with the fugitive slave law enforced, the right to interfere with the 
local institution denied by us as well as them, and the idea, by this 
their reception, becoming a new pledge and contract, we believe that 
we should but secure more firmly than ever the perpetuity of slavery on 
the southern slopes. An evil so poisonous to republican government 



20 THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS'. 

as well as so contrary to the moral feelings of humanity, it is not 
our privilege to leave to such a process. With the monopoly of this 
kind of labor thus secured by the cotton states, the worst passions of 
humanity would be appealed to in its support, and, while not so prom- 
inent in the Government, it could not but be a source of mischief, 
beside the sad providential visitations to which it would subject us>. 
Never will we be allowed to reunite the nation ignoring any reference 
to our national sins, and if we hope so to do, we shall miserably fail. 
Our watchwords must be these r 

The Union ! " It must and shall be preserved." 

Our national sins ! They must be forsaken. 

Education and morals !' They must be sustained. 

But the question at once arises as one of great importance, whether 
ft is not contrary to the Constitution, to require of the seceded states 
accession to the doctrine of gradual emancipation before they resume 
their position in the Union. And this brings us to deal with one of 
the most monstrous fallacies of our day. It is,, that the rebellion is to 
be dealt with, even so far as the state rights of the seceded states 
are concerned, in accordance with and entirely within limits of the 
Constitution. By many who put forward this sophistry it is known 
and recognized as a fallacious argument. It is adduced hy the very 
men who are the least indignant at the rebellion itself, the highest 
disregard of the Constitution of which- a state or people could be ca- 
pable. And it will in the records of our Congress generally be found,, 
that the very ones who palliatethe crime of treason, and are opposed to- 
confiscations and punishments, are those who are special pleaders for 
•adherence to the Constitution in any measure unfavorably affecting- 
so-called southern interests. The loyal people of the United States 
not only respect the Constitution, but so long as it is - the law of the 
land, because it is such, desire its fulfilment in letter and spirit to all 
entitled to the benefit of its provisions. But it is a very different 
question as to how far the Constitution guides us and how much it 
limits us in dealing with such a rebellion as this. Because under the 
present Constitution we have no right to free the slave of Delaware,, 
it by no means follows, that we have not, if thought best, the right 
to decree such a measure in South Carolina. Even with a casual ex- 
amination of the Constitution, the broad, palpable, indisputable fact 
meets us at every section, that it was not made for the rebellion. It 
is a document for the government of a true, loyal, law-abiding people. 
Tts chief aim is to unfold the general method of our government in 



THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 21 

subserving the interests of a nation at peace. True, there are allu- 
sions and provisions having- reference to war, but these evidently re- 
late to foreign aggression or mere local insurrection. The idea of a 
brotherhood of states larger than the original thirteen, in a condition of 
rebellion, was never legislated for in the Constitution. It is in no wise 
such a war document. 

Conting-oncies have occurred in no wise legislated for in the instru- 
ment. No nation in its written constitution, ever provided for such 
an internal exigency as this. Extraordinary crises require extraor- 
dinary provisions. For states in a condition of armed and intense 
rebellion, without a parallel in the records of history, to plead their 
rights under the Constitution, is the boldest fallacy conceivable. 
For sympathizers with them, or so-called conservatives in our govern- 
ment, to attempt to apply definitely and specifically to them the pro- 
visions of the Constitution is equally preposterous. They are not 
under theConstitution, but have rebelled against it to an extent not pro- 
vided for therein. As a compact, they have separated themselves ; as 
a contract, they have broken it; and though this does not release them, 
it does release us from treating them as if faithful. They are subject 
to damages such as are not specified, because no where in the document 
are we told what shall be the punishment for ten states, by means most 
desperate and unprincipled, seeking to destroy both Constitution and 
nation. There is a sense, in the law of nations, in which a contract 
broken and entirely ignored, leaves the dominant party in possession 
of the right to demand more than the original terms, and especially if 
moral wrongs have caused the difficulty and matured the bad results. 
So far as the Constitution, by letter and spirit, gives us the clue to ac- 
tion amid treasonable crises it is worthy of regard, but it cannot be 
considered as at all limiting us in its details. The chief guide the Con- 
stitution aifords us in a state of war, is as defining what may be done 
among ourselves rather than what should be exacted from the bcllig- 
gerent power. If it provides for any such emergency, it is where the 
Supreme Court is given " original jurisdiction over all questions 
arising between two or more states." But even this does not antici- 
pate armed rebellion, but rather peaceful adjudication. A state that 
has taken the law in its own hands, can not then claim the jurisdic- 
tion of the government from which it has revolted. Its only rights 
are those it possesses under the law of nations. Its authorities are 
the Yattels, not the Valandighams of the world. The rights of a loyal 
state under the Constitution may justly be pleaded in any and every 
emergency, but what are the rights of a disloyal state, by armed treason 



22 THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 

killing our loyal so7is, destroying our public and jirivate jyossessions, 
and threatening our very national existence, I cannot find specified in 
the bond. All reference to armed rebellions, insurrections, treason and 
the like, are evidently in case of individuals, or of parts of states. 

We have already, from acknowledged necessity as a government, 
adopted certain measures in reference to the seceded states which 
are manifestly against the constitutional provisions intended for the 
loyal. The seceded states can not be dealt with according to the 
Constitution, any more than Diptheria can according to Galen. ^Both 
are good authorities, but do not treat of the disease. The doctors of 
law and of medicine are to treat both according to the best judgment 
and the best information which investigation and attention can fur- 
nish. Throughout this rebellion we have from absolute necessity, in 
many a crisis, acknowledged this principle. Ports have been closed, 
blockades instituted, harbors obstructed, private rights restricted, 
property destroyed, and authority in various ways exercised, which 
at any other time would have been monstrous tyranny. Our fore- 
fathers wisely left us to deal with such a crisis as this, according to 
our own judgments and the general principles of international law. 
Our chief mistake has been that we have not used this power 
enough. 

But there is still another sophistry, formidable, because indulged in 
by many who are high in authority, and patriots at heart, which, if 
adopted, leaves us powerless to overcome this rebellion. It is, that inas- 
much as there is no such thing as the right of secession, therefore no 
states have seceded, and, as still members of the Union, they are en- 
titled to all the privileges and immunities thereof. In accordance with 
this technical play upon words, it is affirmed that the rebellion is one 
of individuals and not of states ; that a majority does not constitute 
a state, but the loyal citizens do, and that therefore, so long as a 
state has a loyal member resident therein, he is the state, and as 
such the state and he are entitled to all their privileges under the Con- 
stitution. The Government itself has fallen into this logically worded 
illogical doctrine, and hence in the management of Western Virginia, 
ami in the provisional governorship of Tennessee, Louisiana, and 
Carolina, finds itself involved in questions of law, for which it has to 
extemporize the statutes, and then wrap their legality all around with 
the great martial cloak of military law. 

The error is in ft doable meaning attached to the word right, and 
in a false distinction drawn between a state and its people. When 



THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 23 

we say truly that a state has no right to and can not secede, it does 
not follow as a logical deduction therefrom, that having under most 
flagrant circumstances made the attempt, it has not forfeited some 
or all of its former rights. Because it has no right to secede, this by 
no means releases it from a penalty, any more than the culprit is re- 
leased from the punishment of his crime because he had no right to 
commit it. The very fact that there is no such thing as the right of 
secession makes the state liable to such forfeiture ami attaint as the 
General Government may see fit to inflict upon it, whether it be a 
judgment like that for a petty larceny, or such as would be visited 
upon the most flagrant crime in the category of disobedience. It is 
entirely in the province of our Government to determine the punish- 
ment, and as there is none specified in the Constitution, it is for the 
law of nations to determine the penalty. What that is, the English 
method of dealing with rebellions clearly determines. 

Again, when you come to speak of a state under a republican form 
of government, you can speak of it in no other way than as repre- 
sented by its constituted, legislative, executive and judicial authori- 
ties, except it be when these prove recreant to fall back upon the 
original power of the state which is that of majorities. Hence, by 
the law and custom of all free nations, the people are made account- 
able for the acts of the ruling powers, except where majorities show 
their disapprobation thereof. There is no liberal government on the 
face of the earth, in which it is not considered just to judge a people 
of a state by the voice of their rulers, and it is especial leniency if, 
in addition, reference is had to the voice of the majority of the people 
as confirmatory or corrective thereof. If in such a rebel state there 
are loyal men, they are by the wrong action of the majority, which is 
the only ultimate power which constitutes a republican state, cut off 
from the usual state-rights, and their only rights are those which re- 
fer or accrue to them in relation to the general government. They 
fall back under its jurisdiction entitled only to the privileges which 
belong to the citizens of a territory or to those of the District of Co- 
lumbia. If a man by treason forfeits his relations to a state, so a state 
by treason forfeits its relations to the general government. A loyal 
citizen in it, as a citizen of the United States, is entitled to all the 
protection which accrues to him as a United States citizen indepen- 
dent of his state relations. When we say a state has no right to se- 
cede we now only mean to say that instead of so-called seeeding, it 
has rebelled in fact and form. It has placed itself in a position of 



24 THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 

abnegation, denial and rupture of the contract it once made, and 
bears the same relation to us that Ireland, or the separate states of 
our own country did in their great rebellions to the mother country. 
Call it insurrection, secession, revolution, rebellion or what you may, 
we all know it means just what a desperate son means when he de- 
nies all the authority of his father, scorns his counsel, sets at nought 
his reproof, and then attempts to slay him. The very act in itself 
is a forfeiture. No constitution the world has ever seen, ever thought 
of providing for such a contingency. Every constitution does pro- 
vide for individual cases of treason and for local insurrections, but 
when whole parts and parcels of the government rebel, the whole sub- 
ject is modified. It is as if one department of the government re- 
belled in toto ; and the Constitution no more directs, or limits us in 
dealing with such a condition of things, than it gives rules of pro- 
cedure in case the Congress and the Superior Court should rebel. It 
is to be treated by those laws of judgment and of precedent by which 
armed and extensive rebellions have always been managed. 

In carrying out these principles we are to recognize the mercy of 
justice. He is the most merciful surgeon who cuts or burns deepest 
and quickest about the wound of Hydrophobia, and he the most merci- 
ful legislator, who, with strong hand, applies laws and forces equal 
to such a crisis. Mercy herself, from her sublimest heights of com- 
passion, knows justice as her friend and not her rival, and the govern- 
ment which attempts to be merciful without being just, always is a 
failure. God himself is the only governor who ever made it possi- 
ble to pardon the rebel and yet sustain his government, and He made 
it possible only at the cost of the Cross. Neither the law of God, n<»r 
our law, the Constitution, prohibits us from those means which arc 
needed to crush this rebellion. State rights quail before human rights. 
They vanish when the state attacks the nation ; when the child is 
murdering the father. The Constitution directs the loyal states now 
just as much as ever before in their relations to each other, or in 
dealing with any insurrection arising in parts of the loyal states, but 
never at all does it indicate what we are to do when whole states 
are in armed rebellion. The citizen of Virginia, who is loyal, is to- 
day entitled to the protection of his property if moved to Maryland 
or Missouri. But by virtue of the present status of his state he has 
forfeited all claim to protection in the rights which accrue to him 
only as a state citizen there. It is no more the duty of our Govern- 
ment under the Constitution, not to interfere with his slaves if kept 



THE WAJl AND ITS LESSONS. 25 

In a rebel state than it would be their duty to protect him in carrying 
his slaves on a traveling tour through Europe. It is high time we should 
cause to cease this miserable twaddle about the rights of rebel states and 
of rebels under the Constitution. What would you have thought of our 
forefathers if in their holy and just cause, history had recorded that after 
the declaration of the 4th of July, 1776, they kept claiming their rights 
under the British Constitution. Tiiey had no such soft spot. Up to the 
time they meant only redress, they did talk only thus, but after that day 
never again. Yet the South seeking not redress, but separation, and 
the Tories of the North, are still in this unholy rebellion against liberty 
and in behalf of the despotism of slavery, prating of rebel state- righto 
under the Constitution. 

It seems to us, therefore, entirely a question of statesmanship, right, 
judgment and propriety, untrameled by any provision of our Constitu- 
tion, having reference to loyal states, for us to decide in what manner we 
shall deal with slavery in the seceded states. With that question the 
Constitution has nothing to do. It is a matter to be determined only 
by the laws of impartial justice, united to such mercy as is consistent and 
allowable therewith. Some will say, conciliate them by forgiving them 
and receiving them back as members of the household, our equals and 
our friends, and this would do if it would be just, if it would be judicious, 
if they repented of their sin with full endeavor after new obedience ; but 
if they desire to return unrepenting and with their sin in their right hand, 
clinging to it as their cherished love, it is a matter quite different. We 
believe there are but two questions debatable in respect to their future 
position, in case it is in our power as a nation, to determine it. These 
are, whether we shall subjugate them, or whether confiscating the slave 
as well as other property, of all known rebels, we shall demand of the 
state an acceptance of the Gradual Emancipation policy, with remunera- 
tion for the slaves as a condition of their return. If we may thus put the 
evil in process of decay, we may, perhaps, be able to survive a gradually 
decreasing wrong ; but sooner than receive them back just as they 
were before, let us run the noble, hopeful peril of stern defence, of stern 
right, and not be swallowed up in sinful participation with Korah and his 
company. When the war ceases to be a selfish one, and becomes one of 
principle, when it is in behalf of human rights and justice generally, as 
well as for our covrUry, when we come to contend for the glory of God 
and the welfare of humanity, then we may ask the God of battles to be 
with us, and he will hear us. Mere national policy ought to teach us that 
it is not safe to take into our bosoms the viper which has wounded u-; al- 



26 THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 

most to mortality, or again to nurse the weapon that impelled the dart. 
But above all these, the argument to be derived from the moral wrong or 
sustaining iniquity by a law, is the one that should seize upon us and 
give point and power to our effort. 

It is policy individually to do right, even in this world, as a rule, but 
still more so for a nation, since its retributions are all in this world and 
not in the next. The cost of doing right is never to be calculated when 
it is for the prevention of doing wrong. The cost of just one sin, although 
it once seemed so profitable, is now being rolled up upon and thrust 
through the American people faster than all the cotton bales and sweet 
barrels of 60 years have replenished our treasuries, and letters of blood, 
red with the mingled currents of thousands of hearts, spell out legibly 
the sentence : " It always pays best for a nation to forsake its sins." 

But in considering the condition of our nation at the present time, it 
will not do for all our views to revolve around Slavery, as if this were 
our only sin, or as if a settlement in respect to it would at once clear 
our political horizon of every threatening cloud. There are other powers 
of darkness boring away into the solidities of our framework, of which 
we have great occasion to take cognizance in such perilous times as these. 

Intemperance is second only to slavery, in the wickedness it entails 
upon the nation, and in the derangement which it causes of our governmen- 
tal machinery. In its power of general corruption, in its universality all 
over the land, and in the miserable enginery by which it aids corrupt 
legislation to accomplish its ends, it is even more active than slavery it- 
self. Even in the South, King Alcohol has been a general partner with 
King Cotton, and throughout the North has held most potent sway. Be- 
sides its mediate force in reducing the moral status of the nation, and 
aiding and abetting in every form, those vices which are all inimical to 
republican government, its immediate evils are felt at the ballot-box, the 
starting point, the platform, the sacred acre in the grand area of freedom. 
So long as the place of voting is the place of rum, so long as demagogues 
and politicians may deal out intoxicating draughts to those whose votes 
or influence they thus expect to foster, so long as the vote of the drunken 
debauchee can negative that of the consistent patriot, so long as such po- 
pular sovereignty as this is popular, so long will republican government 
in our land, be on the road to desolation. Can a clean thing come from 
such uncleanness ? Can good government be the logical or practical re- 
sult of such influences? There is no law in nature by which bad trees 
hang luscious with good fruit, and so long as we nourish and propagate 
such plants, we shall have apples of Sodom on the tree of liberty. So 



THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 27 

long as we attempt the hazardous experiment of nurturing, or allowing 
vice, and giving it equal power with virtue, so long we shall be political 
chemists playing with bad combustibles, and ever and anon the explosions 
will come. Only when the ballot-box is made to represent the views of 
a people, the majority of whom are loyal, moral and intelligent, can we 
expect a good republican government, and that will not occur so long as 
those evils which prominently foster vice and pander to it, are so little 
under restraint. The law of self-preservation requires of a republican 
government that it prohibit the beverage use of intoxicating liquors, es- 
pecially on days of election, that it locate its places for holding elections at 
town halls, or school houses, or on other town or district public property, and 
that it punish drunkenness at the same time that it is sedulously securing 
such moral culture as will diminish such vices. It is our duty as patriots 
as well as philanthropists, to see to it that the laws are enforced and tem- 
perance and sobriety, by precept and example, encouraged 

Our third prominent national sin is our politics. From causes hereto- 
fore mentioned, and from the very methods of operating our political 
system, great calamity and disaster accrue to the nation. Lord Mansfield 
said, " I want popularity, but that which comes, not that which is run 
after." There is too little of this sentiment among our people. Poli- 
tics has come to be too much a trade. It is a most unfortunate thing for 
any, and chiefly for a republican government, when office-seeking becomes 
a popular vocation. It has no right to take its place among the mechanic 
arts. In the early statutes of Connecticut there was a provision, that any 
one who was chosen by the people as their governor, and would not ac- 
cept, should be subjected to a heavy penalty, but now there is scarcely need 
for such provision in respect to the most insignificant town office in the gift 
of a road district. The love of office has permeated all ranks of Ameri- 
can society. Thousands conceive that they have ability to govern, while 
masses are restless in the idea of being governed. Not that men may 
not with propriety, desire, and under honorable restrictions, seek, places 
of trust, honor and emolument ; but so frantic has this desire become, 
that it outruns all the bounds of moderation or modesty. It has substi- 
tuted restlessness and impatience of restraint, for civil contentment, and 
has become the Moloch of the American people. The whole method of 
operating American politics has encouraged this. No party, of late 
years, has dared to risk its success by advocating permanency of official 
positions. It has been felt that such a course would strike a death blow 
to the exciting causes of party activity. No chance for an office ! Why, 
such a plank in the platform would let slip two-thirds of the political 



28 THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 

standard-bearers of the land. Hence the doctrine of frequent changes of 
office has become popular. Elections are the signals for official changes. 
The question of competency, the cost of these changes, the value of ex- 
perience in that particular department, are little esteemed in comparison 
with the idea that the chief ones who have aided in success, shall now be 
rewarded by positions. Such a doctrine, carried into practical execution, 
as it most thoroughly has been in our day, will ruin any government. It 
is a gilded bonus and regular premium for venality. It is a wholesale 
bid for corruption. Men thus are led to spend money, time, influence r 
character, for mere party purposes, expecting to receive their pay in tlie 
rewards and emoluments of office. It is a noble part of the plan of our 
aovernment, that hereditary rights should not be the test of desert, and 
that every position should be alike open to all, but it was never intended 
that the changes should be made, or offices created just for the purpose 
of vacancies, or that any other test but merit, should avail the candidate 
for public places of trust and honor. Frequent changes of office are 
o-enerally unfriendly to stability. That is the best method of operating 
a jiovernment which retains its good and efficient men longest in office, 
and rids itself of the unreliable or inefficient with the greatest ease. It 
is a most dangerous political habit, to change officers merely because the 
the period of election has returned. While it is desirable to have bal- 
lotino-s at intervals not too distant, in order that officials may be sub- 
jected to the test of opinion, yet it is highly desirable that the nation 
should be strongly averse to any change except for most manifest reasons. 
The contrary is the popular course, and is full of disaster to the interests 
of our country. It adds immensely to national expenses, it institutes 
office seekino- as a special department of American training, it encourages 
party spirit, that bane of republics, it displaces men just as they have be- 
come most efficient, and by the servility and instability it creates and 
fosters, jeopardizes the welfare of the nation. Were there a recognition 
of the evils arising from this source, and a change in action correspon- 
ding thereto, we should do more toward imparting economy, stability and 
harmony to our political system, than by any other mere political ar- 
rangement whatever. Our vast country, with its broad invitations to every 
species of agricultural, commercial and artistic enterprise, and with posi- 
tions of honor and emolument open in every profession, can do good justice 
to the talents and energies of its people without making of its politics a 
trade or so ceaselessly throwing the golden apple into the arena of politi- 
cal strife. When the political conscience is so corrupt, as that our chief 
ones receive fortunes as a bribe, and regard it as a legitimate business 



THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 29 

transaction, it is high time that the people should begin to dry up some 
of the sources of such degradation. In fact, so corrupt have the politics 
of our country become, that it is scarcely possible for a man of high- 
toned moral principle to mingle in the arena of political legislation with- 
out a sacrifice of moral standing, and of a discerning conscience. Heat 
least who has passed to success and popularity through all the grades of 
political culture, from the primary meeting to posts of national honor, 
has the witness in himself of moral unfitness for the position of a repub- 
lican statesman. Exceptions there may be, but they are barely enough 
to help substantiate the rule. A bold politician once said : " I am not 
afraid to run against a good man, for I can always beat him, but a man 
worse than myself, I am always afraid of ;" and although few would be 
willing to put the fact so strongly, it is true that high-toned moral prin- 
ciple is but a very minor element in political success. Hence many of 
our purest as well as ablest statesmen, have withdrawn or been thrust 
from the posts of national honor because of this very thing. Knowledge 
and virtue must be in demand in our politics ; else they will not have the 
opportunity to perpetuate our independence. The organic law and prin- 
ciple upon which republican liberty becomes a possibility, takes for granted 
the majority power of justice, virtue and truth in politics, as well as every 
where else. 

We have thus specifically noticed slavery, intemperance, and politics as 
the three prominent national sins requiring legislative or popular inter- 
ference and abatement, not forgetting, however, that no republic reforms 
will be permanently successful unless sustained by the under-arching 
conviction that intelligent religious principle must be at the basis of all. 
Mere reforms are always worthy of being made, and sometimes, by stress 
of emergency, necessary, as if in themselves curative, but only with the 
hope that intelligent moral action in the future will not only support 
them, but produce results not standing in need of reform. Such a recog- 
nized principle was the only one that made our forefathers hope and plan 
for the permanency of a republican government. Independent of this, 
they well knew that the grandeur of its conception would be surpassed 
by the magnitude of its ruin. On every other basis the experiment had 
been tried to their satisfaction, and they proposed to repeat it, only 
because religion, virtue, and education combined, seemed to have offered 
a new and better foundation on which to build. But for too long a time 
our free temple has been sliding off from its base. Civil liberty has, with too 
many, ceased to be recognized as a system of restraints, with the provision 
only, that the restraints are those conducing to the moral, intellectual, and 



30 THE WAR AND ITS LESSON'S. 

physical welfare of the people. Justice has been too often decried on the 
plea of mercy. It has become immensely popular to do just as one 
pleases, to call just restraint, oppression ; justice, tyranny ; a regard to 
law, severity ; and adequate punishments, cruelty. Next to the preven- 
tion of moral evil, a vigorous punishment of crime is the highest essential 
of a republic; and a pardoning power against crime, and rebellion especial- 
ly, is the most dangerous any government can exercise. Such a thing as 
republican liberty in perpetuity is only possible when rulers and ruled 
recognize it as a system so balanced and ordered as to promote industry, 
morality and intelligence, and so appreciative of good things, and so 
condign in its punishment of evil things as to foster the one and dismay 
the other. It is sadly inexpedient as well as wrong to forget in our 
doings, even now, that such are the piers on which rest the spanning 
arches of American freedom ; and though it is a severe task to relay the 
abutments 'mid tempest and storm, yet if not now relaid there is no hope. 
The necessity is worthy of gigantic effort. If we hesitate too long, if we 
trust too much to patching, the superstructure itself will be in ruins, and 
who then shall gather up the fragments 1 It is grand for a man in emer- 
gencies to dare to do right, and for a nation it is a sublime necessit.y. 
For our nation, it is the only salvation. This war may not cease until it 
brings us up to the point of decisive vindication of the only true founda- 
tions upon which national liberty can rest. 

Good citizens must be at work. Truth will not prevail if its friends 
are sleeping, or merely groaning over the degradation of the times. 
They must be found laboring as those feeling that the moral and social 
as well as intellectual elevation of the masses is the problem, the solution 
of which is republican freedom. Let education be felt to mean heart- 
culture as well as mind-culture, and then be promoted as a great national 
interest. Let existing laws against public sins be enforced, and new ones 
add to their vigor. Let the ballot box be sacredly protected from the 
pollutions of rum, and of money-purchased votes. At the primary 
meeting, at the convention, at the polls, let the better classes always be 
found doing their duty. Cleanse the fountain and the streams will be 
pure also. Corrupt trees will never bear good governmental fruit. 

Principle, and that means principled men, must again claim a voice in 
politics. We need, too, to review the whole popular idea of liberty, and 
to make the Government far more than it is, a system of wholesome 
restraint. How most or all of these things shall be done, are questions 
of no very difficult solution, when the majority comes to feel that they 
must be done in order to render political prosperity and existence possi- 



THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 31 

ble. I, for one, believe that this war will not be permitted to end to our 

satisfaction until such necessities are more fully recognized. If our motto 

is, " Our Union, right or wrong," the impious sentiment will trail our 

banner in the dust. If we are willing to have it, and to keep it, with all 

its sins, still onward in their course, we shall never have it at all. Until 

the nation pants to be rid of its legalized and permitted corruptions, more 

than for a mere restoration of the Union, and for the latter chiefly as a 

means of securing the former, the white-winged dove of peace will never 

bear back to us the olive branch that shows the waters are retiring. It 

is not peace we need so much as purity. Would that this purity could 

have been purchased at a lower price ; but purchased it must be, though 

with our own and our children's blood. National as well as personal 

afflictions are sometimes " blessings in disguise." If we will not be 

wooed with mercies, it is well to be driven with chastisements. Our 

nation needs as much as ever did a man to utter the cry — 

" Nearer, my God, to Thee — 
Nearer to Thee ; 
Ev'n though it be a cross 
That raiseth ine," 

If this war, even with its disasters, is not the hope of the nation, we 
have no hope. We must be purified, though as by fire. Fearful though 
the black clouds, the risen storm, the lightning flashes and the thunders 
roar, may be, yet they do purify the atmosphere, and after the day of 
overheat, restore vigor to an exhausted people. We are to seek to 
secure from the war, not only peate, butsuch national renovation as shall 
clothe peace in the garments of purity. A reaching out of the majority 
of the nation for a higher, purer national life; this, and this only, can 
make our war or our peace a success. 

Just to-day may not be the precise time for the settlement of all ques- 
tions as to our national sins and short-comings, but they are pending, and 
this is the era and epoch for such settlements. There must be a fixed 
conviction that they are to be abated and destroyed, that such are among 
the ultimate objects of the war, and the only legitimate questions are as 
to the methods. Every true American should be watching, and awaiting, 
and hastening on the day when our Government shall be administered 
on the basis of a purer morality, a more principled intelligence, and a 
more rigid enforcement of right and justice. 

The three problems of the age are — 

I. How to suppress the rebellion. 

II. How to make the people of the seceded states fit to be received 
back into the Union, and 



32 THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 

III. How so to reform the Government and the nation as to make 
them more powerful in promoting those virtues which give life to civil 
liberty. 

These are great problems ; but our age, if equal to itself, is capable of 
their elucidation. If we make this a struggle for a purer national life, as 
well as for Union, in our repentance there is strength, and we solve the 
three in one, for then Jehovah is on our side. If the good and the great 
will but arise in the majesty of their God-aided power, behold victory ! 
If not, it is the beginning of the desolation. 

With right views among the majority of the masses and among those 
in authority, very much can be accomplished in the right direction with- 
out any change of our Constitution. While we may not prescribe terms 
to the slave states still in the Union, to those which have rebelled, and in 
punishing whom the Constitution is not the penal statute, we may nobly 
and rightly say that justice and the public good requires an acceptance of 
the emancipation and remuneration policy, before we can reinstate them 
to the position of innocence. In relation to intemperance, political 
changes, and easily besetting national sins generally, much can be done 
by the general Government and by individual states in abatement, which, 
so far from conflicting with the Constitution, will but efficiently carry out 
its theories. While much depends upon the instrument itself, still more 
depends upon the operators and their modes of managing it, and it is 
highly and expediently possible now, as it never has been before, to make 
our Constitution as it is, subserve the high interests of a people aiming 
at a higher standard of morals in all that relates to government and law. 
Whether in the future it may need modification or amendment, is a ques- 
tion which time alone can determine. If we can not be rid of prominent 
national sins without such alteration, surely it will be our duty to make 
them ; but if, as Ave believe, the secession of ten states has afforded a 
solution of the problem, how to become eventually rid of slavery, there 
is at least one prominent evil that can be abated without such alteration, 
and we believe it to be conceded that the Constitution does not even 
tacitly admit the endurance of other sins. If it does, or if it fails in any 
way to conserve the interests of good morals, the separate states may do 
much by way of reform, or the time will come when it may be proper to 
amend it. It is one thing to change a Constitution in order the better to 
carry out the principles of its founders, and quite another to change its 
whole form and method. The loyal part of our nation is at present as 
well satisfied as ever before with the theory and the organic construction 
of our Government, and those who believe that slitrht modifications in 






THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 33 

details are desirable, are very far from being enemies to the Constitution 
or to the will of its founders. As well might old Schaeffer, the printer. 
rise up to call Hoe his enemy, or Watt to denounce Fulton, or Franklin 
to curse Henry and Morse, as for the founders of our Government to 
be conceived as dishonored by those who believe that slight modifications 
would make their instrument more effective. 

If our nation can only rise to the point of conforming the Government, and 
the people of the loyal states more to the Word of God, and the spirit of 
the Constitution, and will deal with the disloyal according to the principles of 
common sense aud justice,, and meet out punishments suitable to armed 
rebellion, then we shall make our times glorious in the records of the 
ages. It will no longer do to consider the rebellion as a local insurrec- 
tion, palliated by circumstances. It is the highest outrage on the rights 
of man which history records, and as such a nation with intense ear- 
nestness, must deal out in a mass the force necessary to crush it. For- 
bearance now is hideous cruelty to untold millions. It is high time to 
resoiteven to severe measures, as necessary to quell the rebellion. We 
must deal out to it death-blows. We must pour out upon it all the fury 
that liberty requires to insure safety, and use all the weapons that are 
needed to battle out anarchy and misrule. It must be a struggle not for 
mere victory or restoration, but for a higher national life. We need not 
only to be reproduced, but rejuvenated, regenerated, expurgated. We de- 
sire not merely to beat back to where we have been for the last 20 years; in 
our politics, our morals, and our modes of mental and social development, 
traveling onward toward a precipice ; but we must yearn to come again 
to peace, with faces turned toward the foundations of true freedom, with 
new lessons learned, or rather the good old lessons relearned, that prin- 
cipled education and intelligent virtue are indispensable in order to per- 
petuate independence. The war will not end until we know it and wish 
it to be a struggle for ideas, for principles, for purity and for civil liberty, 
as only the offspring of Christian civilization and intelligent morality. 

Let the Government no longer hesitate to meet the crisis. While the 
South is fighting for secession and slavery, and others* for the Union as it 
was, with all its sins, let the administration recognize it, as at once a 
struggle against rebellion, and for a reformation in all that relates to edu- 
cation, politics and morals. Thus far, both sides have log-rolled to please 
Satan, and the South is most expert in that direction. Now let us dare to 
call this conflict an attempt to place liberty on the pedestal of Christian 
principle ;. an attempt to cleanse the Augean stable of politics, to renounce 
and forsake our national sins, and to re-establish our nation on the basis 



34 THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 

of a more closelyjdefined liberty, a purer morality, and a more biblical 
civilization. There is power in such an aim more than in all the armies 
that now are treading the banks of the Potomac. The sword of the 
Lord and of Gideon will be ours, and the restoration be worthy of the 
name. 

If we do not avow such a determination, is it not too probable that dis- 
aster and defeat will alternate with victory, until from the people, some 
God-fearing hero will arise, like Cromwell in the Commonwealth, rally- 
ing t6 his standard, the true, the virtuous and the brave, and like another 
Washington, lead on to victory, on grounds upon which God can be for 
us, and we shall do valiantly, for He it is that will tread down our ene- 
mies. 

We believe the time has come when it is needful that our country 
shall feel and declare its policy, and then work, think, pray, give, endure as 
those who know what they are contending for, and that the objects are 
worthy of the greatest sacrifices of which a nation is ever capable. When 
we know and feel that the aims of our Government are not merely defen- 
sive and selfish, but aggressive, up to the determination to place itself 
upon a platform on which it dares firmly, but yet judiciously, to eliminate 
known sins, then we are fighting, not that we may be at ease in our sins, 
but that ourselves, posterity, our country, and the broad earth may be 
blessed. Then are we valiant for principle, equity, and righteousness, 
with truth as our banner, and God ai our shield, and that makes a host 
before which our enemies will be but as "a very small thing." The 
conflict may be violent, but the victory will be commensurate with the 
struggle. 'The blood of our sons, and the tears of our daughters, will be 
the showers and the dew-drops which will make our tree of liberty lus- 
cious with its choicest fruit, and the Star-Spangled Banner of American 
freedom wave over a nation, taught by experience and resolved in princi- 
ple to make intelligent virtue and applied justice its foundation, practice, 
and aim. 

Then " our example shall shake, like a tempest, the pestilential pool in 
which the virtues of o'ur people are already beginning to stagnate, and restore 
the waters and the atmosphere to more than revolutionary purity." 
With such ends and aims in view, we shall have an object clearly defined 
and worthy of the highest patriotism, and the loftiest zeal, alike of the 
virtuous, the philanthropic, and the brave. We shall be engaged in a 
struggle in which our country, humanity, and God will be interested as 
upon our side, and we shall not fail of success. As the young men grow 
weary, or fall by the way, the sweat and the blood of the martyrs will 



/f 



THE WAR AND ITS LESSONS. 35 

scatter the germs of a renewed life, and though purified as by fire and 
blood, a nation will survive worthy of such an ordeal. [Let us then, as 
those warring in a just and holy cause, buckle on Shew the armor of 
courage, and be valiant as men contending for principles worthy, if need 
be, of years of trying conflict and unflinching endurance. Our forefathers, 
not only in the revolutionary war, but in the severe self-denials and dis- 
cipline of generations before, suffered as we have not yet commenced to 
reach a parallel, and who shall say that they, too, dearly paid for what the 
United States has done and been since 1776. With higher incentives 
to manly daring and courageous zeal, let us, too, endure for coming 
generations as they have endured for us, and upon the altar of our bleeding 
country plight faith to the memories of the past, to each other, ourselves, 
our country, our posterity, and our God, that we will be found faithful to 
the trust which has been committed to us, and sustain, like moral and 
intellectual, as well as physical heroes, the test to which we are sub- 
jected. With Christian civilization, intelligent morality, and impartial 
justice as the recognized pedestal on which alone national liberty can 
firmly stand, we will still bear aloft the insignia of American freedom, 
until the tempest and the storm are past, and from the trial and the 
triumph, gather at once the elements and assurance of perpetuity. 



LB i 



